The UAE National Innovation Strategy that will send an unmanned probe to explore Mars

"A source of Arab pride" – Sheikh Mohammed

21.10.14

Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum's latest plan to raise the profile of the UAE has its sights set on the stars...

Following on from Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum's announcement yesterday that the UAE will undergo a seven-year 'National Innovation Strategy', another seven-year journey has been thrust into the limelight.

There is a plan to send a UAE unmanned spacecraft to Mars, which also officially launched this week, with Sheikh Mohammad describing the project as "a source of Arab pride".

In a series of Twitter messages, the UAE's Vice President and Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai said the UAE had taken the "first step" in building the Mars probe, after the UAE Space Agency and the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) signed an agreement.

"I witnessed today with all pride, the first steps towards building the first Arab, Islamic probe to reach Mars," Sheikh Mohammad tweeted, continuing, "We started today, a seven year journey with a national team; through it we will cross hundreds of millions of miles to build globally competitive Emirati individuals," and, "Building a Mars probe is a national job, a source of Arab pride and addition to human knowledge. We say to the people of our region join us in building a new history for our Arab nation."

The probe will take nine months to make the more than 60 million kilometre journey to Mars and will mark the UAE out as one of only nine countries with space programmes to explore the famously Red Planet.